By Adam Curry on Tuesday, March 22, 2011 at 1:42 AM.
Dave asked me a question today; "What is Frontier". He was referring to the Frontier product, which I equate to the OPML Editor, as I believe it houses all of Frontier 'under the hood'.
He sent a link that explains Frontier's core, the object database.
I only looked at the link briefly, as I didn't want it to cloud my open minded thoughts about the answer to the question.
The answer actually came to me no more than 5 minutes after we hung up our skype call:
Its Word for the Web
This is of course the short answer, because it is more like the entire Microsoft Office Suite. For the web.
As I started to dissect and compare the elements of the Office productivity suite, the comparisons are astounding.
I started to break down the individual components and list the features and uses.
Word is a writing environment. It's output is paper. It is not used for email, or instant messaging. It is a tool to communicate ideas with formatted output. It uses a form of stylesheets that are customizable by the user and highly customizable by users skilled in it's native stylesheet language.
Frontier's output is the web. It creates a native format; opml that it can render into a variety of ways on the web. It communicates ideas based on formatting, structure and links to other opml documents. It is a writing environment for writers. It's outliner is connected to all facets of the suite and therefore has capabilities that far exceed Word. Word also has many interoperative features with the Office suite, they are usually hard to find and master by users and certainly do not look like the near-english scripting language of Frontier. Presentation on the web is controlled by open formats like CSS, jQuery etc.
A large segment of Excel users make use of Excel for maintaining lists. Lists are natuve to Frontier and the Outliner. Of course there are organizations that build very complex applications in Excel. Many of it's UI features are not easily replicated in Frontier, but it can certainly take inout and perform calculations, since it is a mature scripting environment, and therefore completely programmable. Excel's primary output use is on a computer screen, it's output, like Word, translates poorly to the web.
Powerpoint is a snazzy outliner. It's web presentation capabilities are poor. Frontier is an outliner that has very sophisticated web output capabilities.
My favourite. The promise of the Access 'database' was easy of use for the user. Nothing could be further from the truth imho. Frontier *is* a database, it speaks a language that is mature and easy to learn. Frontier's database capabilities are inherent and native to the entire suite, as all data is stored, accessed and processed by the database. Access feels like a strap on to the Office suite, which if I recall history correctly, is true.
I could write about this for a long time, but I want to keep the thoughts simple and the read short.
Considering the industry that is built around the Microsoft Office Suite, it is completely reasonable that the same can happen with Frontier. Every grade schooler should be educated to use it, entire organizations can be built around it.
It delivers on the necessity of 'fractional horsepower' applications for sa connected world.
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